A reader tipped us off to the gut renovations going on at 527 Manhattan Avenue (just south of 122nd) about a year ago and it looks like the restored building is almost finished with getting the facade repainted. Records show that the former SRO building was converted to a 3-family building with a dental office space below but there seems to be a problem with the exterior paint color. Originally, the brownstone was painted brick red (top photo) which works for a brick building but not so much for a brownstone. After some patching of the stone surface, what appears to be the primer coat of paint has been applied in the past couple of months (lower).
Neutral colors run the spectrum of warmer colors to cooler ones and can often be hard to differentiate with an untrained eye. The color currently applied on the building goes towards the cooler range which basically has a purple hue to it. Our advice would be to go to the other direction and choose something warmer, with more of a yellow undertone to it for a natural stone look on the final coat. One can actually see the yellow undertones on the brownstones next door when compared to No. 527's unfinished state. All painting tends to stop during the winter so it probably won't be until late spring for the final finishes to wrap up on this one.
at the risk of sounding simplistic, isn’t it best to try and match the colour of the original brownstone as much as possible to reduce the colour inconsistencies that make a block look, um, not tied together. I was going to say skitzy but that is so understandably non pc
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